Adams Elementary School in Ballard voted “No Confidence!” Regarding the Performance of Dr. Goodloe-Johnson

Of the18 ballots returned:

17 votes of no confidence

1 vote of confidence

SEA, the Seattle Education Association Recommends to the School Board Not To Extend Superintendent Dr. Goodloe-Johnson’s contract.

Seattle Education Association, June 21, 2010

Press release:

With the growing number of schools taking no confidence votes in Seattle Public Schools’ Superintendent Goodloe-Johnson, over one hundred elected association representatives for the Seattle Education Association (SEA) debated the merits of taking a no confidence vote as a body at their monthly business meeting tonight. The SEA representatives decided to postpone a vote of no confidence until they hold an SEA General Membership meeting at the start of the school year. The general membership meeting will be held to ratify or reject a tentative negotiated agreement. SEA President, Olga Addae stated, “The representatives decided they wanted to see how the superintendent manages the negotiation process this summer. They also want to have more of our members involved in the decision of whether we support the superintendent or if we have no confidence in her.”

The association representatives did vote to recommend to the school board that they not extend the superintendent’s contract at this time. The members felt that just as they are being held accountable to show growth when their performance needs improvement, the superintendent should prove that she can make significant improvement in the areas that the school board has identified prior to another year extension in her contract. “Superintendent Goodloe-Johnson currently has a contract until 2012, over two years from today. Our representatives felt the school board can wait until improvement is made before guaranteeing her another year on the job,” Addae said.

West Seattle High School Votes “No Confidence” on the Performance of Dr. Goodloe-Johnson

That makes the tenth school so far whose teachers have voted “No Confidence”.

The vote was out of 42 ballots turned in, 4 voted to abstain, 3 voted “confidence” in the superintendent and 35 voted “No confidence” in the superintendent.”

Maybe the school board will start getting the hint soon that our supe is not measuring up.

Nine Schools So Far Have Signed “No Confidence” Resolutions Regarding the Performance of Dr. Goodloe-Johnson

The nine schools are Franklin High School, Ballard High School, Sanislo, Schmitz Park, Laurelhurst, Orca, Ida B Wells, Green Lake Elementary and Maple Elementary.

Maple Elementary School voted "No Confidence", 17 yes, 1 no and 2 abstaining

According to our source, Maple Elementary School used the Sanislo document in large part to describe their concerns.

Should the School District Be Allowed to Give Our Kids’ Phone Numbers, Addresses & Photos to Every Tom, Dick and Pollster?

The private contact info of 10,700 Seattle Public Schools students and 1,400 teachers ended up in the hands of a political marketing firm. How did that happen? Should it be allowed? A group of parents says No.

A number of Seattle Public Schools parents and teachers were recently shocked to read that the private contact information of 10,700 SPS children and 1,400 teachers had been given to a political marketing and polling firm by the school district.

In March, Seattle-based Strategies 360/DMA Marketing used the information to conduct a telephone poll for the Our Schools Coalition, a new organization created by the Alliance for Education. Out of this poll came an online petition. In its “Methodology,” 360/DMA explained that it had surveyed three groups -- teachers, parents and voters -- and that respondents from the first two groups “were randomly selected from lists for each segment provided by Seattle Public Schools.” (This sentence has since disappeared from the petition site.)

Who gave the district permission to share our children’s private information with a marketing firm?

The school district claims it did not in fact give the info to 360/DMA, but to Schools First and the Alliance for Education, which both made requests late last year. The Alliance, a funding and P.R. affiliate of the school district, used the info to send the district’s educators a critical report on teachers that it had commissioned. Schools First, an organization that runs school levy campaigns, sent SPS families a mailer urging them to support the February 2010 levies.

According to Schools First, a rogue staffer then passed the information on to Strategies 360/DMA on behalf of the Alliance for Education, bypassing the policy (and maybe even the law) on how this information can be shared.

This raises a number of questions and concerns for parents: Who gave the district the right to share our kids’ info with anyone in the first place? And precisely what information did they get?

According to the district, we did. Sort of. Apparently the district is legally permitted to share student "directory information" under FERPA, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy, unless parents or guardians sign an opt-out form the district sends home at the beginning of the school year. FERPA is a federal law that allows families access to their children’s educational records, but allows other entities access as well.

Disclosure of student information has been a hot-button issue for a while at the high school level because FERPA also allows military recruiters access to this data. Some parents have advocated for a military opt-out option, which the district offers on the high school FERPA form. So the district has created two forms, one for pre-k-8 and one for grades 9-12.

Think back to the beginning of the school year and the stack of inaugural paperwork your child came home with – sign-up sheets for after-school programs, volunteering and PTA membership, etcetera. Somewhere in there was the FERPA form. Maybe you saw it, maybe you didn’t. Maybe you handed it in, maybe you forgot.

The problem is, if a parent or guardian fails to return the form (or never receives it) the district interprets this as default consent. The district can then give the student’s “directory information to “anyone” who requests the information.

According to the school district, it gave Schools First “Directory information,” which in this case included: student name, parent name, school, grade, mailing address and phone number. But it can include a lot more:

"Directory Information: Under FERPA, SPS may release “directory” information to anyone, including but not limited to parent-teacher organizations, the media, colleges and universities, the military, youth groups, and scholarship grantors, unless you tell SPS that you do not want the information released. The following information is considered directory information: parent/guardian and student name, home address, home telephone number, home email address, student photograph or video, student date of birth, dates of enrollment, grade level, enrollment status, degree or award received, major field of study, participation in officially recognized activities and sports teams, height and weight of athletes, most recent school or program attended, and other information that would not generally be considered harmful or an invasion of privacy if disclosed."

It’s hard to imagine how the release of a child’s photo, video footage, home e-mail address, birth date, height and weight to a complete stranger could not amount to “an invasion of privacy” or potentially lead to some kind of harm.

How many families of Seattle Public Schools' 46,000 kids know these details is debatable. Chances are, most parents and teachers would not want their children's or their own contact information shared with just anyone.

Washington State law (RCW 42.56.070(9) bars anyone who requests such information from using it for commercial purposes. So the Seattle School District requires those making such a request to sign a “Declaration for Noncommercial Use.” Anyone who signs this form and then violates this stipulation can be penalized for “false swearing” (under state law WAC 44-14-06002(6).

Both the Alliance for Education and Schools First signed some version of this form. But 360/DMA did not. It’s not clear how it could have, since it is a commercial enterprise that was ostensibly hired and paid to conduct its poll using use the student contact info. The handover from the person at Schools First effectively bypassed this security measure.

What’s more, while some parents may have signed FERPA forms with the district consenting to sharing this info, they did not give Schools First or the Alliance permission to hand out their kids’ information to anyone they please, let alone a political marketing firm.

Also, the Our Schools Coalition poll has been criticized in the school community and blogosphere for harboring an agenda, or for being a “push-poll.” The poll’s questions predominantly focused on teacher payment right at the time when the district began contract negotiations with the teachers’ union.

So for some parents and teachers, it added insult to injury to have our children’s private information used for an agenda-driven poll.

DMA Marketing was recently in the news in Oregon for conducting a controversial political poll on behalf of a Beaverton City Council candidate, Mark Fagin. Fagin paid DMA $14,000 for the poll.

Assuming that the Alliance/Our Schools Coalition paid DMA a similar amount for its poll, then it would seem that a commercial enterprise used our public school kids’ private info for profit, which is against Washington State law. (An e-mail to Strategies 360 asking about this has received no response.)

As it stands, right now “anyone” can request this information and get whatever records have not been protected by an opt-out choice, so long as they sign the declaration. But is the Declaration for Noncommerical Use enough of a protection? The district does not require that a person state his/her purpose, or promise not to hand it off to a third party. What if some kind of child predator were to make a request? That’s 10,700 names, home phone numbers, e-mail and home addresses, and possibly photos and videos of kids between the ages of 5 and 18. It’s scary to think about.

Clearly these are loopholes that leave our children vulnerable. This episode has left a number of us parents pretty unsettled. Something fell apart here, and with it, protection for our children’s privacy and, arguably, safety.

In this era of easy access and transfer of private information via the Internet, whether it’s credit card theft or identity theft (and I have been the victim of both), creepy people and predators online, it seems a no-brainer that we parents should demand and expect our school district to keep our children’s contact and private information tightly sealed, and not handed off to any tom, dick or pollster who comes along.

So a group of SPS parents are filing an official request to the Seattle School Board to change the FERPA privacy protection policy and form. We believe that it should no longer be an “opt-out” but an “opt-in” form, meaning that parents should have to actively choose the box that says “Yes” (the district may share my child’s information with select entities), and if they don’t, or leave the form blank, the district must assume the parents’ answer is “No.”

We also believe that anyone who requests info must state their purpose, and be legally obligated to not keep it for other uses. We would like the declaration document to clearly state that the recipient will not pass the information onto a third party. Currently the document does not state this.

The school board should take action on this matter as soon as possible. Like the recent controversies over Facebook and Google’s acquisition and use of private data, this is another case where privacy, safety and modern data-gathering collide. We absolutely need to err on the side of privacy protection, especially when it concerns kids.

Any parents who share our concerns and would like to sign on to this request to the School Board are invited to add their name in the Comments section below, or email us at seattle.ed2009@gmail.com.

SIDEBAR:

Who opts out? Not that many. Is that by consent or default?

According to SPS’s most recent records, in pre-K-8, 31.8 percent of families checked Box B (“I do NOT consent to the release of the above directory information about the student named below, except as authorized by law”) That means that 69.2 percent either checked box A (consent), or failed to sign or return the form at all.

At the high school level, 17.6 checked Box B (no release) and 46 percent checked Box C (consent to everything except the military), according to the district. The remaining 36.4 percent must have selected Box A (consent) or not signed it at all.

(Source: Seattle Public School District)

Here’s what FERPA says:

“Schools may disclose, without consent, "directory" information such as a student's name, address, telephone number, date and place of birth, honors and awards, and dates of attendance. However, schools must tell parents and eligible students about directory information and allow parents and eligible students a reasonable amount of time to request that the school not disclose directory information about them. Schools must notify parents and eligible students annually of their rights under FERPA. The actual means of notification (special letter, inclusion in a PTA bulletin, student handbook, or newspaper article) is left to the discretion of each school.”

(Source: http://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html)

-- sue peters

Greenlake Elementary School Votes “No Confidence” in the Performance of Superintendent Dr. Goodloe-Johnson

The vote was 26 For, 1 Against and 1 Abstention.

CORE wins leadership of Chicago Teachers Union

Press Release

This is a new day!

CORE (Caucus of Rank and File Educators) decisively wonthe leadership of the Chicago Teachers Union. The new president of thethird largest teachers union local in the US, with 30,000 members, isKaren Lewis. Karen and the CORE slate swept every position in theelection. This is a strategic victory in the battle against the assault onpublic education and the entire Arne Duncan neoliberal education agenda ofprivatization, mayoral control, corporate domination of schools, highstakes testing, and evaluating teachers based on students’ test scores.CORE is an explicitly anti-neoliberal, social justice union and a keymember of the Grassroots Education Movement in Chicago, a coalition ofteachers, parents, students, and community organizations fightingRenaissance 2010 and for equity and justice in education.

Chicago is the national model for Duncan’s education plan, and CORE’svictory opens the potential to defeat it on home ground. Obviously thishas national significance. Moreover, the CTU under CORE will be in aposition to influence the national union, the American Federation ofTeachers, and change the landscape of education struggles in the US. Thisis a historic victory. Congratulations to CORE and all their parent,teacher, education activist, student, community supporters who helped makeit happen. Now the real challenges begin.

Pauline Lipman
Teachers for Social Justice, Chicago

Putting Two and Two Together in Detroit

I’ve been following the story of Detroit School Chief and Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb who was discovered receiving money from the Broad Foundation.

The Detroit Public School Board unanimously voted to file a lawsuit against Mr. Bobb stating that a conflict of interest had developed by him receiving those funds.

Since then it has been established that Bobb cooperated with the Broad Foundation and “charter school backers to draft a plan that calls for a mayoral takeover, and replacing traditional schools with charter schools.”

I keep wondering why our Seattle school board can’t put two and two together and come up with the same conclusion for our superintendent.

Teachers at Laurelhurst Vote “No Confidence” in the leadership of Superintendent Dr. Goodloe-Johnson

More info to follow.

No-confidence motion: “Whereas Dr. Goodloe-Johnson, superintendent of Seattle Public Schools, is an ineffective leader”

I am going to show this per the statement issued to SEA by the staff at Ballard High School on May 26, 2010:

No-confidence motion
Whereas Dr. Goodloe-Johnson, superintendent of Seattle Public Schools, is an ineffective leader in the following ways:

Her conflict of interest in selling the school district an unproven standardized student assessment plan sold by a private corporation on whose board she sits, and her failure to disclose this conflict of interest to the School Board at the time of the sale.
http://www.publicola.net/2010/02/12/seattle-schools-superintendent-on-board-of-nonprofit-that-got-370000-contract-with-seattle-public-schools/

b) Her mismanagement of human resources in last year’s RIF included unnecessary layoffs, a mock “firing” of all members of our collective bargaining unit, and a retraction by certified mail that cost the school district $18,000.

c) Her contemptuous attitude toward public and staff. For example, at the March meeting of the School Board, she entered the meeting only after public testimony was concluded. For the May meeting to celebrate Teacher Appreciation Week, she paraphrased a heartwarming but fictitious story about a fictitious teacher and fictitious student. Using this story was at best intellectually dishonest and suggests she knows no stories about Seattle’s teachers.

d) Sneaky accounting practices and diversion of resources to fund pet programs (Appendix 3)

e) Effective resegregation of SPS through redistricting and eliminating busing programs

f) Ineffective management of grants important for sustaining minority programs, particularly Native American programs (Appendix 1)

g) Widespread and growing public dissatisfaction with Seattle Public Schools leadership
http://www.cppsofseattle.org/News/May10/supt-surveyMay2010.pdf

h) Attempting to charge PTSAs for donating money (a way to divert donated money to pet projects)

i) Using outside consulting firms (at what cost?) to hire principals. By the way, this fancy firm advertises on Craigslist. http://seattle.craigslist.org/see/edu/1737149149.html

j) Non-transparent links and finances with Broad Foundation. See this link http://saveseattleschools.blogspot.com/search/label/Broad%20Foundation
Vis-à-vis Broad Foundation consultants working in-district.

k) Ineffective communications and an inability to develop consensus among stakeholders led to public relations debacle and messy withdrawal of the initiative to lower graduation GPA requirements

l) Failure of “Southeast Initiative” (Appendix 2)

m) Confused initiative to close schools led to extra expenses to reopen 5
http://www.seattleweekly.com/2009-10-21/news/seattle-schools-closing-one-day-opening-another/

n) An accounting system that can’t provide answers: “About $100,000 in equipment and electronics and as much as $500,000 worth of copper wiring and other assets are missing or were stolen from area schools, according to the State Auditor’s Office. Though district officials dispute the numbers, they’re unable to determine exactly what’s gone or put a precise value on the loss. A year after the copper wiring was stolen, the district says the cost is still “unknown.”
http://www.seattleweekly.com/2009-08-19/news/500k-in-stolen-school-supplies-and-no-report/

We, the teachers of Ballard High School, move to express our lack of confidence in her ability to move our school district, our teachers, parents, and students forward in a positive and equitable way.

Appendix 1
http://saveseattleschools.blogspot.com/search?q=native+american
I attended an Audit and Finance Committee meeting where it had come out that the program manager of the Native American program had overcounted the number of students by a wide margin. (This is for a federal grant which requires a certain form be filled out by each student’s parent or guardian. The district knows – mostly – who is Native American in our district but cannot claim them on the grant without the form being filled out.) This gross error caused the district to have to go back and repay the money to the feds (although I still don’t know how much and if there was any penalty for it).

So what now comes out is that even though the original program manager who made this mistake is gone, the new program manager compounded the error by getting the grant in late. He was trying to send it to the feds….15 minutes before the due date and he had a “computer” problem. So the grant was, of course, denied.

So now the Native American program grant is in the second tier of funding which means if there is any money left over. Think that will happen? I doubt it. The district is kicking in money for the program but only a third of what was funded. So they are getting rid of the two teachers who were helping the students academically.

Now, at the time of the Committee meeting, Michael DeBell seemed very upset and he asked who was accountable. What he was told was that the program manager was gone. HOWEVER, the district didn’t mention at the meeting that there was a new person in place nor was that person in the room. Now why wouldn’t the district bring in the person who is in charge of the program? Probably because it turns out that person had committed the gross error of not getting the grant off in time and district staff KNEW it at the time of the meeting.

There have been a few meetings with parents/community and the district. Apparently at one meeting, there was some tense dialog between one parent and the head of the program, Arlie Neskahi, over whether he had responded to e-mails. The Superintendent was there and yet again, brushed it off as a personality conflict. (See the pattern? She likes to dismiss, on any grounds, parent/community input as too subjective, too personal and basically, not worthy of her time.)

So this past Board meeting, several Native American parents and students came forward to let the Board how upset and concerned that they are. Then, the Superintendent, during her updates, had Dr. Enfield and the head of the program, Arlie N. get up and explain. Did they mention the overcount? No. Did they brush over the late grant? Yup. Did the Board let them off scot-free without even so much as “this is deeply disappointing”? Sure.

Here’s what was said:
Dr. Enfield claimed that the staff shares the “urgency” that the community does. She says the program needs a more comprehensive program for both academics and support. She claims they are now in compliance with the grant requirements. (And note, the grant specifies a parent advisory committee which they hadn’t done for years.) She says they will do a better job getting Native American parents to fill out the form needed for the grant. She talked about the district “improving our internal systems and processes” and that Arlie “has taken the lead on this”. What?!? The same guy who couldn’t do the most important task at his job, namely, getting a grant off on time? This is the guy you trust?

Then Dr. Enfield said something that should give us all a good laugh. “How do we put into place opportunities for community conversations in an ongoing basis so we are engaging in collective problem solving?” That’s the $64,000 question, isn’t Dr. Enfield? Go ask your boss, I’m sure that would get filed right in the circular file next to her desk.

Then she said the most damning thing of all, “I think we want to get to a place where we are not reacting to things that crop up as perhaps a ‘pseudo-crisis’”. More on that in a minute.
Arlie gave some stats on Native American students in our district. There are 850 above the ship canal, 150 located in Central, 1,000 in the SE and 375 in the SW. They have a goal of getting 700 of the needed 506 forms.

When asked about what academic supports will be there for these students now that their teachers are gone, Arlie danced around the question with a lame mumble about tutoring after-school sometimes. Dr. Enfield said that the district has challenging budgets and limited resources. Really? And how is that a comfort to these parents?

I have been communicating with Native American parent and activist, Sarah Sense-Wilson. She and other parents are deeply dismayed with all of this. They have tried to work with the program manager(s) and have largely been held at arm’s length. For example, they tried to set up a presentation by the NW Justice Project for parents and students on their legal rights regarding expulsions and suspensions. That got blocked by the district. But then, at the Board meeting, Arlie named that very group as one to work with. According to Sarah, the district has tried to exclude or block community engagement.

Appendix 2
The results of the Southeast Initiative came up in the recent Board discussion of the Cleveland STEM proposal. Director DeBell said that the Southeast Initiative results were disappointing and reflected failure. Superintendent Goodloe-Johnson responded both that the Southeast Initiative was, in fact, successful and that three years is far too short a time frame for measuring results.
Both of her statements were false.

Let’s take the second one first, the idea that three years is just too short of a period to look for improvement. Dr. Goodloe-Johnson was superintendent when the Southeast Initiative was debated and adopted. She was superintendent when the three-year time frame was set. She was superintendent when the accountability benchmarks were set. In fact, she set them. She has been superintendent for the entire life of the project. Every decision about the Southeast Initiative has been made with her implicit approval if not her explicit approval. She has reported to the Board any number of times on the initiative’s progress, usually with enthusiasm and optimism. Not once in all of this time did Dr. Goodloe-Johnson ever suggested, or even intimated – let alone outright stated – that three years is too short a time period to expect positive results. Only now, as the three year period for the effort comes to a close does she give this disclaimer.
If three years is too short a time for change, then why weren’t the benchmarks simply less ambitious? If three years is too short a time for change, then why wasn’t the project made longer? If three years is too short a time for change, then why didn’t she provide that disclaimer at the beginning and all along? If three years is too short a time for change, then why did she express such optimism in her updates? This excuse simply does not stand up.

Next comes the suggestion that the Southeast Education Initiative was any kind of success.
Let’s remember the purpose of the effort. It was to make Aki Kurose, Rainier Beach, and Cleveland into “schools of choice” for families in the neighborhood. Lately, I have seen some revisionist history at work. Every so often it is suggested that the purpose of the Southeast Initiative is to raise student academic achievement through a combination of strengthened academic offerings and signature programs. That’s simply not true.

Here is the direct quote from the document that gives the Southeast Initiative its charter, the Framework for Revised Student Assignment Plan, approved by the Board on June 20, 2007:
The vision of the initiative is to:
• Ensure that local secondary schools are the “schools of choice” for residents of southeast Seattle by providing targeted and sustained resources that will enable each school to develop and implement a comprehensive plan for school transformation.
• Schools will include Aki Kurose Middle School, Cleveland High School, and Rainier Beach High School.Improving the academic outcomes for students at the schools is only part of the means to that end. The accountability measures were to be:
• Enrollment Growth• % of First Choice
• Increased Academic Achievement
• Student and Teacher Climate Survey Results
• Attendance

The Board’s Audit and Finance Committee got an update on the Southeast Education Initiative at their meeting on December 10, 2009. I don’t have the documents that were presented to them then, but I do have access to relevent data.

Enrollment (as of the October 1 count) at the three schools in the years 2007, 2008, and 2009:
Aki Kurose: 465, 434, 561This represents a significant improvement, but the school is still woefully under-enrolled. Also, further analysis (below) shows that the increased enrollment was not due to choice.

Rainier Beach: 361, 453, 500This represents a significant improvement, but the school is still woefully under-enrolled. Also, further analysis (below) shows that the increased enrollment was not due to choice.

Cleveland: 676, 706, 695This does not represent any improvement at all.
% of First Choice:

Aki Kurose: 33.3%, 26.1%, 19.4%This represents significant decline. We now see that the source of the improved enrollment increase was not at all attributable to first choice assignments. Only 39 students selected Aki Kurose as their school of first choice in 2009.

Rainier Beach: 17.3%, 13.3%, 12.8%This represents significant decline. We now see that the source of the improved enrollment increase was not at all attributable to first choice assignments. Only 15 students selected Rainier Beach as their school of first choice in 2009.

Cleveland: 28.6%, 25.8%, 18.0%This represents significant decline. Only 44 students selected Cleveland as their school of first choice in 2009.

Attendance:
Aki Kurose: 86.3%, 87.1%, 86.8% No improvement.Rainier Beach: 78.1%, 76.4%, 77.5% No improvement.
Cleveland: 75.3%, 74.0%, 75.5% No improvement.

Academic Achievement (as measured by 7th and 10th grade WASL pass rates):
Aki Kurose math: 21.8%, 21.9%, 22.5% No improvement.
Aki Kurose reading: 54.9%, 44.7%, 45.8% Decline.Rainier Beach math: 37.4%, 28.6%, 17.6% Decline.
Rainier Beach reading: 70.0%, 67.9%, 61.5% Decline.
Cleveland math: 17.9%, 12.0%, 21.2% No improvement.Cleveland reading 62.7%, 61.4%, 64.4% No improvement.
There is simply no objective measure by which the Southeast Initiative can be said to be a success. Any claims of success are patently false.

Appendix 3
The Washington State Auditor’s office released a report yesterday on the district’s compliance with federal grant funding. What pops into my head constantly when this kind of thing appears is “We’re in 2010 and we still have these issues.” We have Moss-Adams report, the CAICEE report and now the State Auditor’s report (again) and yet, it still happens. That it happens this regularly makes you wonder.

From the audit:
In our 2004 and 2007 audits, we notified District management of these requirements, and in our audit of fiscal year 2008 we reported noncompliance with federal procurement requirements. These conditions have not been resolved.

These are grants for Special Education, Native American programs, and others. Some of the issue is that the district is not going out and getting bids or proposals from multiple vendors as is required and don’t have records to support claims of doing so.

From the audit:
Special Education: We examined eight personal service contracts totaling $1,172,328 charged to Special Education grants. The District could not provide documentation to show these contracts were competitively procured. District staff stated they considered the contracts sole source, but did not have documentation to show how the District reached that conclusion.
Indian Education: We examined two personal service contracts totaling $14,603 charged to the Indian Education grant. The District could not provide documentation to show the contracts were competitively procured. District staff stated they considered the contracts sole source, but did not have documentation to show how the District reached that conclusion.
Head Start: We examined four personal service contracts totaling $217,982 charged to the Head Start grant. The District could not provide documentation to show these contracts were competitively procured. District staff stated they considered the contracts sole source, but did not have documentation to show how the District reached that conclusion.

Title I: We examined six personal service contracts totaling $175,998 charged to the Title I grant for private tutoring services. The District could not provide documentation showing these contracts were competitively procured. District staff stated they considered the contracts sole source, but did not have documentation to show how the District reached that conclusion.

Cause of Condition
District staff was unaware of federal requirements related to procurement. The District also did not follow previous audit recommendations.

Effect of Condition
By not complying with federal procurement requirements, the District cannot ensure contracts paid with federal funds are awarded to the lowest responsible bidder. By not retaining appropriate supporting documentation, the District cannot demonstrate other providers were unable to supply the necessary personal services before it selected vendors. Therefore, it is possible other providers were not provided an opportunity to compete for these contracts, which can affect contract price and quality of service.

But again, how many years before the district has a streamlined and efficient method of operating? It almost seems like they got frozen in time at some point and are continually struggling to keep up.

Brief Overview of each Finding

Indian Education Grant – The District claimed 1,123 in its 2008-2009 grant application and received $233,792. In 2007, the U.S. Department of ed found that the district’s number of eligibility forms on file did not match the number of students counted. The district provided 927 eligibility forms but only 377 were valid. There was also a finding that they did not create the parent committee required by the grant, a finding initially discovered in 2007.

Special Education (IDEA)
This is for a Safety Net award. The district received about $460K in 2008-2009 but there were two students who left the district but the district kept the money. The district claimed it thought that OSPI automatically changed the grant amount if a student withdrew from the district.

Title 1
The district had one paraprofessional who did not meet the highly qualified requirement. The district did report this to OSPI. (The employee had earned $31,455 during 2008-2009.) The district said it wasn’t aware of the requirement and thought this employee was providing services not related to Title 1. An additional finding was that the district had 73 teachers who did not meeting the highly qualified teacher requirements (but none of them taught Title 1 classes). This one seems like a genuine human error on the district’s part and not a big deal. The odd thing is that the reason it occurred is that a teacher resigned and they put in an IA instead of a teacher.

Education State Grants
These are grants to boost funding from K- college. The district had received a one-time sum of $19.8M in 2009. Of that, $12.5M was spent on salaries and $4.1M on benefits. The district had put in a new payroll system in 2008. Apparently this new system can’t detect overpayments to employees funded by these grants. Because of this, the Auditor was unable to determine how many employees were overpaid so how much was lost here is unknown. They were only able to identify one employee who was overpaid by $40K (and the charge to the grant was $8k). A Special Report will be issued later this year on district’s salary overpayments. (The cause here of the overpayments?

When it switched to the new system, District staff members manually entered employee pay codes into the new system. No one did a review to ensure they were correct. Therefore, the District’s controls were insufficient to detect and correct errors in a timely manner.

Internal Controls in Accounting
This one is pretty troubling.
District staff members did not have adequate knowledge of and experience with prescribed financial reporting requirements. Staff did not use the Accounting Manual for Public School Districts in the State of Washington for guidance and information related to capital asset transactions, and recorded them incorrectly.

In fiscal year 2009, the District processed more than $330 million in payroll. We noted that when District changed its payroll system in 2008, it did not update its internal controls to address the increased risks of error or inappropriate entries related to manual data entry. Therefore, the District’s controls over this payroll

Financial statement preparation
District management is responsible for ensuring annual financial reports are accurate, complete, and comply with reporting requirements. However, the District relies on our audit to identify errors in the financial statements and notes, rather than dedicating the necessary staff time, training and other resources to ensure annual financial reports are accurate and complete.

Payroll Processing
During the payroll system conversion, District staff members manually entered employee pay codes into the new system. No one reviewed these to ensure individual pay rates were the rates shown in the signed employee contracts.

The effects of this lack of oversight are that buildings were reported as “equipment”. Salaries and benefits for General Fund were reported int he Capital Projects Funds. Capital accounts payable of $1.6M were in the General Fund. The district also overstated its total unreserved,undesignated fund balance.

For Payroll,
At least 150 employees were paid at a higher placement on the pay scale than their contracts supported. Thus far, a total of $335,000 has been identified as overpaid. This is the result of a systemic issue.

The district admits fault in every case but this isn’t the first time for many of these issues that they have been told that they are not in compliance. That the Auditor’s office thinks the district is relying on the state audits to find their mistakes rather than doing it themselves is troubling.
And
So I had followed up on Dr. Enfield’s e-mail to Charlie and me about the NTN contract. She did answer several questions (but ignored some others). Hence, the follow-up. Now here was my most burning question:
“So there is a signed “agreement” between SPS and NTN but not a contract. This seems quite odd. The Board voted on NTN two Board meetings ago; was that to agree to NTN being the provider of these services but not what specific services? So then the big question: When will there be a signed contract?”

And here is her answer given today:
“Thank you for your comments/questions related to Seattle Public Schools’ contract with NTN. A lawsuit has been filed related to this contract. Given that litigation is pending, we are not able to answer specific questions.Dr. Susan Enfield”

I doubt that she will be able to stave off anyone seeing the final contract when it is signed. So I’ll let the Board know that. You can’t hide behind a lawsuit in order to not answer questions especially the most basic one: when can we see the signed contract?

See, it goes both ways. If I can’t see the signed contract because of the lawsuit, they don’t get to open the STEM program because their contract is in dispute because of the lawsuit. Posted by Melissa Westbrook at 7:41 PM 13 comments
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
NTN Contract Update
So, just to be clear, we have an answer from the District staff about the differences between the requirements of the NTN Contract and the story that the staff has been telling the Board and the public about STEM.

The differences are real.

The contract requires the District to create two completely separate schools each with their own individual identity, identification code with the state, facility, staff, principal, and IT administrator. We have been told that the two STEM academies will share an identity, identification code with the state, facility, staff, principal and IT administrator.

The contract strictly limits enrollment of each school to 450 for a total maximum of 900. We have been told that the capacity of STEM is 1,000 students.

The contract requires that all core classes be taught on campus. We have been told that the students can leave the campus for Running Start classes.

When asked about these discrepancies, it took the staff several days to respond. The eventual explanation was that these differences were discussed with NTN, and NTN agreed, in those discussions, to accept the District’s intended performance in deviation from the contract language. This explanation fails to satisfy. It fails for three reasons. First, if there were negotiations and agreements that differ from the language of the contract, then those terms should have been the ones codified in the contract rather than the ones that were codified. That is, after all, the purpose of a written contract – to codify the results of a negotiation and agreement – not to codify anything else. Second, any such oral agreements outside of the contract would not be enforceable if they contradicted the written agreement. Third, the contract has a clause which specifically says that any discussions or agreements outside of the written language of the contract are void.

Just to be clear and fair. The contract does not require perfect performance from the District. The District is required to make their “best effort”, but Exhibit C provides a better measure of what is acceptable and what is not. Exhibit C provides descriptions of three levels of District achievement: At Risk, Emerging, and Advanced. The District is required – by the contract – to reach at least the Emerging status on all measures. NTN could find the District in breach of contract if it fails. District commits to use its best efforts to attain in all categories at least the status of “emerging” (and with the goal of attaining in all categories the status of “advanced”) in accordance with the School Success Rubric standards attached hereto as Exhibit C.For one of the measures of school culture and autonomy, the Emerging level is “School has a unique identity.” The At Risk version of that effort is “School has failed to develop an identity separate from other institutions.” If STEM continues to be one school, then the District will have failed to achieve Emerging status on this measure. That failure will put the District in breach of contract and would make the contract voidable by NTN. The contract could be terminated: At the non-breaching party’s option, effective immediately, if a party materially breaches, violates or otherwise fails to comply with any of the terms contained in this Agreement and fails to cure such breach within sixty (60) days of receiving written notice of such breach from the non-breaching party:Would a family with a student at STEM have standing in a Court to appeal the Board’s decision to violate the terms of the contract? The law on the appeals is that anyone who is aggrieved by a decision (or non-decision) of the Board can appeal. Is having only a 1/1000 share of the principal’s attention instead of a 1/450 share sufficient cause? Is putting the NTN contract at risk sufficient grounds for an appeal?

Should it even come down to a legal appeal in Superior Court? Shouldn’t it be enough that we, as citizens, expect our government bodies to fulfill the letter and spirit of the contracts they sign? Isn’t it enough that we demand they have the legal acumen not to enter into contracts that they – erroneously – believe are modified by ancillary oral agreements? More than anything, isn’t it enough that not a single member of the Board ever asked a single question about any of these differences between the contract language and the public information about STEM?

In the end, this isn’t about whether or not the District will fulfill the terms of the contract or if NTN will terminate the agreement due to the District failure to fulfill those terms. The critical issue here isn’t the contract at all – it is the obvious failure of the Board to conduct the minimal due diligence of reading the contract they were approving.

Seattle Parents Gathering “No Confidence” Votes Regarding School Superintendent Dr. Goodloe-Johnson’s Performance

There was an interview of three Seattle parents on the news last night regarding the petition that has been circulating saying that due to school superintendent Dr. Goodloe-Johnson’s performance, her contract that is under review should not be extended.

Orca School K-8 Votes 25-1 “No Confidence” in Superintendent Dr. Goodloe-Johnson’s Performance

I don’t have the document yet but I can imagine that the wording is the same as with the other three schools.

The vote was 25 “for”, 1 “against” and 1 abstention.

Sanislo Elementary School Issues Vote of “No Confidence” in the Leadership of Superintendent Dr. Goodloe-Johnson

The document reads as follows:

Whereas the Seattle Schools Superintendent is a member of the board of directors on the Broad Foundation, which lobbies for and financially supports charter schools across the nation, and

Whereas the Superintendent’s strategic plan was drawn up by the McKinsey & Co, under boycott by SEA for their nation-wide advocacy for charter schools, and

Whereas the Superintendent’s performance management plan does not address the real needs of struggling students but instead holds teachers and schools accountable for issues beyond their control, and

And whereas the Superintendent’s performance management plan relies on MAP testing purchased from the NWEA, on which the Superintendent is a Board Director, and

Whereas the Superintendent’s “inclusion model” for special education and English Language Learning students does not provide sufficient resources to support these student’s needs without having reduced class size, and

Whereas the Superintendent’s poor judgment and handling of school closures, resulted in needless disenfranchisement of minority families and the overcrowding of schools, and

Whereas the Superintendent’s new student assignment plan will result in increased racial and economic segregation, and

Whereas the Superintendent’s poor management resulted in laying off then rehiring needed teachers, and

Whereas the Superintendent has failed to submit a certified Record on four grassroots-initiated law suits in violation of RCW 28A.645.020, thereby circumventing citizen’s rights to due process,

Be it resolved the union members at Sanislo Elementary School hereby declare we have NO CONFIDENCE in the leadership of Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson.

Union Members of Schmitz Park Elementary voted “no confidence” in the Seattle School District Superintendent Dr. Goodloe-Johnson

Today, June 3, 2010, union members of Schmitz Park Elementary voted “no confidence” in the Seattle School District Superintendent. They approved the following motion by a vote of 15 to 0, with 3 abstentions.

Whereas the Seattle Schools Superintendent is a member of the board of directors on the Broad Foundation, which lobbies for and financially supports charter schools across the nation, and

Whereas the Superintendent’s strategic plan was drawn up by the McKinsey and Co, who advocate for charter schools nation-wide, and

Whereas the Superintendent’s performance management plan does not address the real needs of struggling students but instead holds teachers and schools accountable for issues beyond their control, and

Whereas the Superintendent’s poor judgment and handling of school closures resulted in needless disenfranchisement of minority families and the overcrowding of schools, and

Whereas the Superintendent’s new student assignment plan will result in increased racial and economic segregation, and

Whereas the Superintendent’s poor management resulted in laying off then rehiring needed teachers, and

Whereas the Superintendent has failed to submit a certified Record on four grassroots-initiated law suits in violation of RCW 28A.645.020, thereby circumventing citizen’s rights to due process,
Be it resolved the staff at Schmitz Park, by majority vote, hereby declare we have NO CONFIDENCE in the leadership of Superintendent Goodloe-Johnson.